The reports of this
weekend’s box office have revealed dour signs for the Marvel Cinematic
Universe. The Marvels had a poor opening weekend and a drastic fall-off
this weekend; the reports are it will probably not even gross $100 million. The
first release this year: Ant-Man: Quantomania had a superb opening
weekend but disastrously dropped off in the second weekend. The third installment
of Guardians of the Galaxy did slightly better than either film but poorly
in comparison to the first two.
This is part of
a trend that has been following superhero movies in both DC and Marvel over the
past year. Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Blue Beetle both were
disastrous financial failures and it remains to be seen if the most recent Aquaman
film can turn things around for the series next month. Marvel’s problems
are deeper, however: Phase Four featured several risky films that did not meet
expectations and it was only through the success of Wakanda Forever that
the Phase was not a complete disaster. Given the increasingly shaky receptions
of so many of the recent Marvel TV adaptation this past year – not only Ms.
Marvel but Secret Invasion and
the amount of chaos behind the scenes of Daredevil: Born Again – it is
beginning to sound that superhero fatigue has begun to set in.
My reaction to
this is simple: Good.
Now before I
receive the utter rage of the internet as to being against comic books, I need
to be very clear that I do not feel this way about all comic book based
adaptations. Growing up among my favorite animated series were the 1990s
version of Batman, X-Men and Spiderman, all of which are still
considered classics today and all of which I intend to write about in a different
context. Furthermore I’ve always like
the well-made superhero film: Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is
a gold standard that almost no comic book film before or since has surpassed. I’ve
already expressed how much of a maligned masterpiece I thought Zack Snyder’s
adaptation of Watchmen was and I thought the HBO adaptation a decade
later was just as much a masterpiece. I was always fond of many, if not all, of
the series in the Arrow-verse in the past decade and if most of them stayed
on past their expiration date that’s a flaw of too many comic book series.
Those of you who read my blog know I ranked Wandavision among the best
shows of 2021. And I have found places
in my heart for certain films in the X-Men franchise and was a huge
admirer of Todd Philips’ Joker.
But I’ve always
had a problem with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I’ve never truly thought the
whole was better than the sum of its parts and that’s allow that all of the
movies in that universe were masterpieces, which to be clear almost none of
them were. That’s not a real shock when you make twenty-four films in the course
of a decade, the law of averages is against the same quality being able to hold
within all or even most of them. I don’t blame the filmmakers for that. And I
admire them for the scope of their plans when it came to tell one overarching story
and can even admire them for being this ambitious in trying to tell it. There
has been a risk with trying to tell a great story from the start of Phase One
onward and I don’t blame it for it increasingly unwieldy with each successive
phase: the filmmakers were juggling a lot of plates and with each phase they
kept having to throw in more hazardous things to juggle. By the time they got
to Infinity War, they were essentially juggling a dozen chainsaws that
were all on fire: it’s not their fault if things had started to get out of
control.
My problem is
that, individually, very few of the MCU films even work beyond the narrow
standard of a summer blockbuster. To be clear, I’m not taking the Scorsese
point of view that Marvel movies aren’t really films; we have to acknowledge he’s
prejudiced on the subject of what he considers a film. My problem is I know that
a great big budget film by the standards of an action movie or other genre CAN
be a masterpiece beyond entertainment.
And by that standard, almost every single film in the MCU cannot pass
that test.
The reason I
feel this strongly is due to a separate fact. The year after Iron Man the
film that started the MCU debuted, the Academy Awards began to expand the
number of nominated films it had for Best Picture as a reaction to the fact
that the Oscars were increasingly nominating movies that were arthouse films
that very few people saw. I’m not to
going to pretend that there has been an immense improvement by the Academy in
that regard: they still prefer the small-budget and ‘serious’ movie to any
blockbuster, comic book movie or not. What has changed is that more and
more summer blockbusters have been nominated for Best Picture in the
past decade and more importantly, many of these films are considered in other awards
that just wouldn’t have been at the start of the decade.
Now the naysayers
will says: “They still aren’t nominating comic book movies for Best Picture”
and I won’t debate that. (I’ll get to that in a minute, though, because there
are other pertinent.) The thing is the kind of blockbusters they have nominated
are definitely the kind of films I prefer as entertainment because they appeal
not just to the eye but the mind. I think it is worth comparing year by year,
the movies that got made by the MCU and the kind of blockbusters that were
getting nominated in their stead.
It's worth
remembering that the major reason the Oscars decided to nominate more films was
because of the justifiable outrage that The Dark Knight was not
nominated for Best Picture of 2008. Even those who loved Iron Man would
have been inclined to say that Nolan’s vision was the deeper film that the
first movie in Phase One.
2009: Unless you
were hiding under a rock you know that one of the films nominated for Best Picture
was James Cameron’s Avatar. We’ll let that go because there was no Marvel
film that year. (Also I didn’t like Avatar.)
2010: I
seriously doubt even the most devoted Marvel fans consider Iron Man 2 a
cinematic masterpiece: most consider a weaker entry in the first three phases.
Few would even think of comparing it to Inception a film so brilliant
and imaginative than more than thirteen years later, we still can’t get out of
our heads and no one has tried to make a movie like it.
2011: Yeah, let’s
be honest the Oscars don’t make it easy for us here. Thor and Captain
America were far from masterpieces but none of the bigger studio films were
what could be charitably called blockbusters. Hugo is one of the
greatest films I’ve seen but it was a disaster at the box office. But during
the summer of 2011 the movie a lot of people were talking about – and seeing –
was Bridesmaids, the brilliant comedy vehicle that officially made
Melissa McCarthy a movie star and gave Kristin Wiig and Maya Rudolph the
vehicle they deserved. The film was nominated
for Best Picture by the Golden Globes and Best Ensemble by the Screen Actors
Guild. Bridesmaids was the film that was robbed by the Academy and it
was far better than either Marvel Movie.
2012: This is trickier
because seven of the nine nominated films did gross over $100 million that year
so its not entirely a fair comparison. And I can see why The Avengers might
have an argument for it. But I’ll be honest there were two other franchise
movies I’m more upset the Oscars didn’t nominated for Best Picture: The Dark
Knight Rises and Skyfall, in my opinion the best James Bond film of
all time. (In fairness, I’m not Bond’s biggest patron either but I think many
critics would agree with me on my ranking.
Moving to Phase
Two:
2013: This is a
little too easy considering that no one considers Thor: The Dark World or
Iron Man 3 even very good films and one of the biggest winners at the Oscars
that year was Gravity a technical masterpiece and one of the most
brilliant works of cinema I’ve seen in the past decade. It gave me chills when
I saw in the theater; it still does on TV.
2014: This is
the rare occasion I might give the MCU some credit. The Winter Soldier is
the one movie in the MCU I consider a full-on masterpiece not just for the
action scenes within it but because it seemed to be set in the real world in a
way most comic books aren’t. The fact that the Oscars decided that their idea
for a superhero movie was Birdman doesn’t help; nor does the fact that
with the exception of American Sniper and The Grand Budapest Hotel that
year they basically walked away from the idea of big budget entertainment. Had
they been willing to nominate Interstellar I might consider it, but in
this case the mcu gets the edge – for Winter Soldier, though, not Guardians.
2015: This one
the Oscars win hands down, not just because Avengers 2: Age of Ultron was
clearly inferior to Avengers one but because they nominated for Best
Picture two genre films that both artistically and from a perspective of a
screenplay had it all over either of the MCU films. No one questions just how extraordinary
Mad Max: Fury Road was or how good a measure of effects and intellect The
Martian is. I would have been fine if either film had one Best Picture.
Moving to Phase
3 and that’s where I’ll stop, mainly because this is where everyone agrees the quality
begins to drop.
2016: This is a
little tricker because we start getting more films. Now I’ll admit Civil War
had the potential to be an Oscar worthy film but compared to the intellect
and majesty on display in Arrival that’s the one I would have chosen.
Considering that movies like Hacksaw Ridge and La La Land were
part of the discussion, not close.
2017: I might be
willing to grant the quality of Homecoming or the amusement of Thor: Ragnarök
but I don’t consider it a close question compared to The Post, that rare,
undervalued Spielberg movie or the majesty of Dunkirk. That said a
Marvel Movie deserved a Best Picture nomination and that film was Logan.
2018: Here is
where I will admit that Spiderman: Into the Spider verse was a good
choice for Best Animated Film. I personally preferred Isle of Dogs but I
honestly think Spiderverse was by far the most ambitious Marvel film I’ve
seen. And I’ll even acknowledge the logic of Black Panther getting nominated
for Best Picture. That said, I’m still nowhere near convinced that as an entertainment as well as personal
significance, it lacks the quality of a film the way that Get Out did
the year before or Black Klansman did that year. And if I’m honest, I
would have preferred a Best Picture nod for A Quiet Place instead.
2019: Not a
close question. I saw all three films and none of them are close to Oscar
material. Not in the way that Once Upon A Time in Hollywood was certainly not in comparison to Joker.
Now of course I imagined
partisans of comic book films and the MCU alike will argue the Oscars bigotry
towards comic book movies as being the kind of film they nominate and I can’t
pretend that I disagree about their snobbishness. If anything, I believe trying
to use the Oscars or really any awards show as a yardstick for appreciating any
film quality is not a bar that we should try to set. I know the kind of movie
the Oscars nominate and no comic book movie could meet that standard. Comedies
are still not being let in at any real rate, horror films don’t apply and it is
only now that science fiction is starting to have any presence at all. The fact
that an action film such as Fury Road (and a sequel, too!) is such an
aberration to the Oscars ridiculous standard I’m kind of amazed it got let in. They should honestly say it’s an honor ‘not’
to be nominated.
But the fact is
this: I would rather watch or rewatch any of those movies that I’ve listed then
any of the Marvel films from the first three phases. All of these movies fall under the definition
of ‘Spectacle’ a term used by Kenneth Turan when he was praising the well-made
blockbuster. He used that term to refer to such movies as Gladiator, Saving
Private Ryan, Lord of The Rings (the first two films) and most revealingly Batman
Begins. I don’t agree with the first
choice but the other films are all the kinds of movie I would gladly see not
only on a big screen but in a theater.
You will also
note that many of my choices for blockbusters I would were helmed by directors you
will recognize and respect as the kind of craftsman you appreciate; Christopher
Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Quentin Tarantino and Ridley Scott and Alfonso Cuaron.
All of these directors are the kind of craftsmen capable of making the kind of films
that can not only make huge amounts of money but are wildly admired by fans and
critics alike. I would rather see any film they make than any film in the MCU:
there was a reason I wanted to see Oppenheimer the moment it came out
and I’m looking forward to seeing Napoleon later this year. We’ve been
talking about these directors films decades after their made; no one talks
about any single Marvel movie for more than a few weeks after it comes
out. Individual performances may stand
out; the films themselves are basically popcorn.
And this, to be
clear, can be seen in certain comic book films as well: there are moments in
all three movies of Nolan’s trilogy that resonate with me after twenty years
and there is power to be found in several of the X-Men films. (I’m going
to talk about them later on.) But the MCU has always been about some bigger
picture rather than an individual work or even series of works. My problems
with them is not they don’t work as comic book movies but because, with rare exceptions,
they’re not about anything other than the special effects and stunts and some
witty lines. They’re not character
studies, they don’t have dense plots; they’re not even really about what’s going
on in the movie – they’re all about rushing ahead to the next film, the next piece
in the puzzle. Most films are about the
journey rather than the destination: the major flaw in the MCU has been that it
has built its films on the reverse of that concept.
The Internet is
divided between partisans who think the MCU has gotten too woke and another faction
that thinks the purists don’t want to recognize change. How about the simple
fact that they’re not just that good? I saw Captain Marvel in theaters.
It wasn’t very good. Not because it was woke; it sucked. It was all about
rushing through an origin story to get the Easter egg. That’s all it was. That’s
all almost every Marvel movie is. Joker which I saw that fall was
a better film because it used the trappings of the DC verse to actually try and
tell a different story. I didn’t like one film and hate the other because I’m a
white male; I liked one and disliked the other because one was a much better
film on every level. I also saw Little
Women and Us and loved them too. You can hate a certain film just
because it stinks: it doesn’t have to be a litmus test for anything.
I don’t know if
this is the failure of the last few MCU means that Disney and Marvel will
finally stop making these films. Far more likely they will take a long enough pause until they think we’ve
forgotten and then reboot them. I confess I’m not personally invested in their
success or failure the way millions of Americans seem to be. All I know is that
we have to stop looking at the MCU for what it isn’t and see it for what it is – and that what it is has
never been as much as so many filmgoers truly seem to believe it to be.
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